Carly Lyn asked Madeline Miller:

Song of Achilles is my all-time favorite book and now Circe is as well. What I love about them both is the complexity of the characters' relationships. Both books are un-put-downable but also super character-driven. What's your approach to creating that page-turning ability in books that are mostly about feelings? What's your revision process like? Do you do a lot of cutting? Restructuring? Filling out?

Madeline Miller Thank you so much, Carly, it is always an honor to hear that one of my books is a favorite! Being able to feel my way through the character's journey is like an actor getting into character--I have to put on the person's skin, be able to speak with their voice, and live their life with them. I always write my drafts chapter by chapter with no skipping around because I have no idea what Circe will be like in chapter 9, if I haven't written chapter 8 yet. And if I make a change in chapter 2, then every single chapter after it has to be revised. Even a small nudge can have big implications for a character down the line. I always want to make sure I'm keeping each character's story in my head, and where they are on their arc. I credit my background in theater with being a huge help in this regard. I direct Shakespeare plays, and it's so important that each character has their own personality, and feels alive on the stage--even the minor ones. It's boring for an audience if an actor is just standing there. They must bring their own thoughts, reactions, pathos, to every moment--they should be living onstage, developing scene by scene. Even if you're just playing one of King Lear's hundred knights with no lines, the character will have gone on a huge journey from the first scene of Lear's power to the last scene of Lear's death. Working so intensively with actors to develop that helped me to visualize it in my fiction--I always want to bring that same vividness to the characters on the page. Which includes being open to moments which surprise me. When I started Circe, I knew I wanted her and Daedalus to meet. But the way that their relationship developed, and the bond between them, came very organically from Circe's life at that moment, and ended up being a formative episode. Ditto for Chiron. I knew I wanted him to be their teacher, but the ways that he influenced Patroclus and Achilles throughout the novel again grew out of me living in the moment in each of those scenes. I rely on my first several drafts to provide those moments of impulse and inspiration. All the later drafts are about shaping it, and making sure I'm being consistent and precise in what I say, and cutting anything that's getting in the way of that journey. I'm a big believer in the quote (I unfortunately can't seem to pin down exactly who coined it--Voltaire, Mark Twain?) which goes something like: "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead." The more I edit, the shorter the book gets, and that's a good thing.

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